


denouement

by NerumiH



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: ?? - Freeform, F/M, Monochrome Dream Eating Baku, Songfic, The Sleeping Princess, nem & tama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 23:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4684610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerumiH/pseuds/NerumiH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd made a pact, and he doesn't break promises. He just didn't count on himself being the one with the nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	denouement

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted on my ffnet!

Len locks the door behind him. He doesn't have spells for that – as opposed to what so many people think, his random appearances in and out of rooms have nothing to do with the unlocking of them. Or any other magic, for that matter. Spells,  _hah_. He's not some fairy tale. He works specifically,  _specially_ , with his dream-snatching talents, immeasurable natural charm, and plain old keys. He'd gotten this one made for him a long time ago.

A long, long time ago.

He strolls up to her. He's walked this path so many times that a step more or less feels unnatural, like a sour beat in a familiar song. (Hell, it'll probably sound strange if he does so much as change his shoes.) He can't help the inherent dance to his gait, cane at his back and flippancy singing; he walks eleven floaty footfalls exactly. And every time – around seven, in the lift of his foot, when her emerald hair appears through the white petals she lays in – he feels the stubborn rabbit kick in his ribs and for a second, a second, a  _second_ he complete stumbles through step eight and nine because he feels like a starstruck schoolboy running headlong into a locker door 'cause he's been  _watching her._

Step ten is seeing her alabaster skin clear against the pedestal she's on and the dress she's in, like solid shadows of waves on the ocean floor. She's always the same, so it only fits that she reveals herself in the same way – only fits that he, too, is the same. Honestly, the only variation in his existence is what he sees in his line of work. The people he meets, no, but what lurks in their heads…

Eleven has him touch the side of her bed. Halt himself. She's buried in white roses, and he hasn't cleared them lately to see what exactly she lays on – glass, a mattress? Thorns? All the flowers before, crackling and dead? He shudders to think. He tightens his gloves, darts his tongue along his bottom lip.

Speaking is unnecessary, for once.

He'll let others do it for him.

Who is it today? A classmate of hers, from the last year. He's  _really_ running out of options. As far as he can tell, this person didn't even pay attention to her. But maybe – if not from seeing herself, then maybe, seeing something familiar... A room, a hall, a teacher. He just wants something to coax her awake. Remind her what she's still got here. Waiting for her.

Luckily, this isn't a nightmare, or something unsavory, as far as he can taste. It'll have to do. For now. Her parents have moved on to only having nightmares about her – (how  _inconvenient_. Don't they know you can only lose someone once? Jeez.) And meanwhile, her best friends gave up on making deals with him, after a few of them wrought the, uh, con-se-quen-ces of doing so, and now they've all got their hackles raised about the blonde, sharp-eared, sharper-dressed Peter Pan who grins toothily over them when they scream awake from some dream about getting brutally mutilated. Maybe he's gotta rethink his game plan. But, man, nightmares just smell so  _good_. He can't help it.

He leans a little closer. Her green hair is splayed, silky and untouched, through the petals, weaving, melting. Where the flowers touch her face, they long to imitate her softness and the cold trapped under her skin. They're  _dead_ , and even they can't manage it as perfectly as she does. He inhales. Thin, through his teeth; a nag at the back of his mind insists that he has to do this perfectly, but he's honestly so good at it, so secure, so  _sure_ , that he doesn't second-guess that taste anymore. The taste of a dream. Something galactic. A million years away. It always feels further when it's with her, like she's all locked up.

She's dreaming something sweet and this new dream he's got for her is candy floss, too, pulled from the head of a young woman with a scarily un-candy-like life. Sometimes he feeds her fillers, dreams not related to her life – listen, how's he supposed to have the proper stuff every second of every day? It gets difficult, and besides,  _he_ doesn't want to freaking  _starve_ himself. And, well. A girl's gotta dream. Things that don't involve her own face, her own world. Escapism, it's called. She used to thirst for it. Other adventures. What, being a daughter, a friend, aaaah- _live_ , wasn't enough for her? It never was. Cup of her experiences, half empty. She wanted... _things_. He's always gifting her dreams to keep her floating, but  _boy_ , does it take a lot – she's greedy, distracted, even now.

Deciding when to exchange the imagery, he finds himself staring fixedly at her eyelids, and is shot with a recollection of – slight, insignificant, obvious – the colour of her eyes. Bright, powerful blue. The colour of electricity. The colour of a core.

…

…

…

It's - ah - not like her eyes are welded shut. He could. He  _could_.

Touch her?

He knows what she's seeing, but what he's missing is seeing her. A bitterness rears in his throat. Can't he want something for himself? For all he's stuck doing for her, she could offer him a little leverage. She was a part of that deal, too. Since then, he'd watched the moon bloat and wither and soar across the sky a  _trillion_  times, but didn't ask her to pay a freaking  _cent_. The first accord, like most of them, was a pinkie swear, pressed somewhere between their stomachs. What was it about? God, he can't even remember. He sucks at this. Immortal and manic, he's supposed to have a memory for deals so he can undermine them. But out of this…all he remembers is  _looking_ at her. Seeing her. What a stupid, precious permission to lose. Knowing she was real. Their pinkies are locked together, pushed into the space of his ribs where the bone branches off in two, the softer in-between. As if he'd forget the sensation of their fingers together otherwise. The deal. (He's a  _demon_.) What the hell kind of deal is this? But she'd been so insistent, smiling sunlight right into his face, made him feel like floating, floating, floating,  _wham_  – !

She was slowly pressing her palm into his. Fingers interlocking.

WHAM!

Weird, how something so small and soft could make him feel like he was being cracked across the head with a bayonet.

...Second.

Second deal.

She was already gone, and he'd stood over her, not unlike now, a bouquet of white roses laying on his arm like a relaxed cat, and asked, "Do you still want to dream?"

Her cheeks were pink with powder – someone else's idea. Some idiot. He'd gotta wash it off for her. It looked clownish. Caricature. Was it supposed to be convincing? Why didn't they just give the people what they wanted – give them  _truth_. Give them something to return to when they sleep, falling apart at the seams, rotten, blood, because he knows better than anyone that although they fear their nightmares, they are  _famished_  for the dark secrets they unlock.

(So is he. He wants her to haunt him, speak to him, do some-some-something.)

Her lips were pert, popped the slightest bit open. A coin of grey shadow tucked underneath the bottom one. He'd stared. How strange, to see them like this. He recognises her better smiling. The longer he stared, the more she warped, slid away like a ghost in a Polaroid. A spot of shadow that once glimmered in the sun.

Quiet.

He snapped the elastic on the flower stems, shrugging brightly. "I'll give them to you. Whatever you want." Picked a rose from the bunch, the thorns grazing dully on his gloves. "But, look, we're gonna have to negotiate, because I can't go playing favourites… No more cherry-pickin'. If I hand over a nightmare, sorry, missy, that's yours to deal with. You're tough – nightmares were never anything to you, were they? Yeah. So, you agree."

He was about to set it near her elbow, then second-guessed. Sure, he couldn't feel pain, but what about her? He gently laid the rest of the bouquet at her skirt where it wouldn't prick, then twisted the stem at the roots until it cracked free.

Better. He placed it beside her. Picked up another few, and did the same. A wicked helix mimed his destruction of the flowers, but inside his own chest.

"You know me, though. I'm always, c'mon, I'm nice. Mostly. To you. Don't laugh… You're special, but you know that, too, sweetheart. So I'll specifically pick dreams just for you – gonna give me a  _loahhh-d_ of trouble, but I want you to be comfortable.  _Sure_ , I'll throw some nastiness in there to keep you on your toes, but, hey – what's wrong with a little fun?"

Green-bleeding stems littered the floor, while he began to briefly pace, kicking up his heels. For all his jauntiness, though, his teeth were grinding secretly between words, black eyes slitting at indeterminate targets. The longer stems nipped up his arms as he twisted them. He felt something stirring, heavy and violent, in his head, balling up bitterly behind his tongue. Forcing past it, he asked, "So, this is our new deal? You just dream forever?"

He couldn't look at her. (He can't see her be still.) But she'd always, always agreed before.

He turned on a heel. Skipped back to her, fixing himself to the frame, sliding along beside her on a forearm like an eager journalist at a bar. Rested his fingers against his lips. "You know how this goes, right? We gotta do something to seal it… How about, this time…a kiss?" His face went warm, and not entirely from the rehearsal of seducing women who loved the effeminate blush. "To make it official, is all."

After slipping off his hat, he cupped a hand around the flower nestling at her shoulder and neck, floating just beside her waves of hair. It couldn't emulate her texture. (He thinks this forever.) He breathed her in, and she tasted of nothing. Her mind was so quiet – it must have been so quiet. His eyes stung, suddenly, and he had to get it over with, could not let her see that her first kiss was with a demon boy with the indignity to  _cry_.

He did not tilt her chin. His hat crushed between their chests. He shut his eyes earlier than usual.

He was used to kissing girls who didn't know how to respond to it. Teenagers who dreamed so, so much about sweet dinners and dances and wedding rings, but furrowed their brows and stiffened their mouths when he actually leaned in. Her placidity was not unfamiliar. How cold she was, that was the frightening part.

How cold. How empty. She couldn't reply.

He shot back. It was done – he felt it, some invisible tie of him to her and her to the end of it all, but it was wrong. Entirely, completely, equivocally: horrifying. That pressure in his head ripped open. His hat pinwheeled to the ground as he pushed the inside of his arm to his mouth, something soundless but warm and wretched tearing out of him. She couldn't – she couldn't do this to him, lie there and have nothing to say, and  _ruin_ him. They'd had a deal. They'd just sealed another. She couldn't go backing out now. He  _needed_  her. A demon, needing something - someone - and she knew he did, from the first second, pinkies locked together like chains,  _I want nothing else but dreams of you._

_Yeesh. Tall order. I don't show up in dreams, y'know? I_ _**can't** _ _. I'm not Krueger._

_That reference is old to even_ _**me** _ _._

_Well, I still can't do that for you. Sorry. Pains me to say it. Don't you want something better? I don't know, like, dreaming of living in some book-world? Harry Potter is a popular one with most people._

_I'm not 'most people', monochrome demon._

_Okay, then, what about some fantasies about a crush? You get to marry him or her or anything. New dream-life. You play Xbox all night and talk about books that are more pretentious than Harry Potter, since you've got something against it, apparently. What about that?_

_I_ _**just** _ _asked you to give me that, and you said no._

_I'm - what?_

_I just asked you to give me dreams about a crush and -_

_Ah, uhm, okay. No deal. No deal on that one... What - well, what else, then?_

_Hmm...if you don't show up in dreams, I guess you'll just have to stay with me then. Asleep or awake. Not physically, and not always, but - don't just vanish from my life._

_I don't usually -_

_That's all I want. Stay with me. C'mon, monochrome demon, break a rule or two for me?_

What would she have said  _this_ time? Yes, to the kiss. Made him do it again, better this time. She would have agreed to it all – daydreams and nightmares and the curse afterwards because she wanted something new,  _escapism_. A girl with such a bright, vivid mind… He'd never let her go quiet.

Before he'd turned away, that night a thousand years ago or whatever it felt like, her drowning in the roses and burning on his mouth, he'd added, throat parched, one thing she always wanted.

_Monochrome Demon? What does that make me, Technicolour Sorority Girl?_

"My name – my  _real_  name, it's Len." He'd smiled crookedly. "And – the monochrome part – don't worry about it. You won't have to find out for a long time."

…

…

…

In the meanwhile, his steps: one, two, three, to eleven, and now, twelve is superfluous. Twelve is his knee hitting against the stone platform, a drop of useless weight when he leans down to her. Like there's any way to be any closer.

His fingers find the contour of her jaw, unasked, without consequence, as if he's always been invited to. For how tense he is, she's casting a haze of ease over the points where he touches her – his free fist clenches, but he is gentle in caressing her bottom lip, brushing the moon of her eye socket.

He can't carry on her life like this.

He can't keep her awake in everyone else's imaginations, but, hell, he  _will_ – he'll never stop, as long as he can bear it, and even further than that.

All he wants is just a  _moment_ of her.

She never talks. She never moves, so he can't find her mind through the way she jokes, the way she walks a few inches above the floor, the way she grins back at him when he's over her in nightmares. She made him  _laugh_ , genuinely, how can a mortal girl manage to do that to  _him_? She made him want to  _listen_. He can't find out the way her mind works through the physical, the present, anymore. He feels sick.

Eyes shut, he leans his forehead against hers. He'd give anything for the thoughts behind this skull to be her own, utterly, entirely. He's already selling out her family, her friends, and the world. He will happily leave them strewn in misery. It doesn't matter. When she wakes up, she'll have  _him_.

She has to wake up eventually, right?

A contract's a contract, and it always goes by the cycle of the moon, but she has extreme circumstances. She's untouched by any sky, now.

He hisses, "This wasn't part of the  _deal_."

Falling for her wasn't, either.


End file.
